Free The Fall of Night by Christopher Nuttall Page A

simply give up the islands, no matter their anti-colonial sentiments; their government would fall quicker than an apple from the tree, or an American bunker-busting bomb.  “I wonder…”
     
    “Sir, your helicopter is ready to depart,” Drury said, hours later.  Langford nodded tiredly; he had been studying deployments, wondering where he could draw a company or battalion from to make up some of the overstretch.  It wasn’t like 1914, where Britain had had worldwide interests, or even 2003, but it was still tricky…and the endless cuts in the deployable forces hadn’t helped.  “The Police are still reporting that the streets are blocked.”
     
    “I should go in a Challenger tank,” Langford said.  He smiled at the thought; the British Army had been intended to switch to Eurotanks, of which there were nearly a thousand units on order, two years ago; naturally, the project had overrun and only one European unit had Eurotanks.  “That might show them something about the world.”
     
    Drury said nothing.
     
    The Metropolitan Police hadn’t exaggerated, Langford realised, as the helicopter came down towards Whitehall and the MOD Main Building.  Protesters swarmed as close as they could to the centre of the British Government, the organised protests disintegrating into peaceful anarchy.  The protesters seemed to just want to protest; Langford had heard that the police had wanted to disperse them, but the government had forbidden it for political reasons.  The weather forecast had promised heavy rain in a day or so; it had been hoped that the rain would put most of the protesters off their game.  Some of them shouted towards the helicopter as it came in to land on the roof; they were too far away to know what they were shouting.  He doubted that it was anything important.
     
    “Welcome to the Main Building, sir,” Captain Scott Hammock said.  “They’re all waiting for you in the briefing room.”
     
    “Thank you,” Langford said.  He wasn’t surprised that the others had arrived first; they could use the series of tunnels linking all of Whitehall together without having to avoid protesters.  They walked down corridors, the monotony broken only by a faded VOTE SAXON poster that no one had had the heart to take down, and into the main hall.  A small set of aides and assistants were waiting outside; they were wallflowers as far as the weekly security briefing was concerned.
     
    The interior of the briefing room had been renovated several times, currently designed to reassemble a corporate office, rather than the dignified centre of government that Whitehall aspired to be.  The Prime Minister stood to greet Langford as he came to a halt and saluted; his bulk made it seem as if he was a beached whale.  Prime Minister Nicholas Donavan actually believed half of the statements he made in public and in private; Langford gave him that much credit.  Like John Major, no one really questioned his integrity; his grasp of political affairs was another matter.  If Labour and the Conservatives, to say nothing of the Scottish Nationalists, hadn’t so thoroughly discredited themselves…
     
    “Thank you for coming,” Donavan said.  Everyone else in the room, with the exception of a dour-faced Police officer, was a political appointee or politician; Langford was uncomfortably aware that he was outnumbered.  The ongoing budget crisis, seemingly impossible to solve, had left Donavan with a desperate need to cut costs, anywhere.  The MOD’s budget got smaller every year.  “I believe that we can begin now.”
     
    Langford took his seat, noting the presence of the Chief of the Defence Staff, Jack Redding, and the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Neddy Young.  The Deputy Prime Minister was off pressing the flesh for a by-election in Scotland; his place had been taken by one of his trusted aides.  The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Bruce McClain, looked grim; he was the third person to hold